


Half Sunk a Shattered Visage Lies

by StardustInYourEyes



Series: After the Academy [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Mentioned Number Six | Ben Hargreeves, Mentioned Vanya Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-21 21:34:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30028185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StardustInYourEyes/pseuds/StardustInYourEyes
Summary: To keep from giving up completely, he had clung to two things:Dolores.And the hope that Ben and Vanya were still out there.
Relationships: Dolores & Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy), Number Five | The Boy & Number Six | Ben Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves
Series: After the Academy [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2168235
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Half Sunk a Shattered Visage Lies

**Author's Note:**

> Me @ the TUA writers: God Five has been through so much, let him be happy for once!
> 
> Also me: *writes this*

“You don’t have to do this,” Dolores said.

Five didn’t respond, just kept walking with a determined stride. His jaw was set as he pulled his wagon down the roads leading to his destroyed home, so familiar yet so strange at the same time.

“What are you hoping to gain from this?” she persisted, as insistent on stopping him as he was on carrying through with it.

_Nothing, actually,_ he thought. But then, he didn’t have anything to lose. So he kept walking.

Dolores was quiet for a few moments, then spoke again in a gentler voice. “Five, I’m sorry. I know you has hoped…” she trailed off. He could fill in the blank- had hoped that someone from his family had survived, that he wasn’t completely alone after all.

“But I really don’t think this’ll help you feel better,” she finished.

“Maybe I don’t want to feel better,” he mumbled. Or maybe he didn’t think it was possible for him to ever feel better.

The last time he had felt like this, this devastated and broken, was when he had first discovered the corpses of his four siblings. He had buried their bodies and tried to do the same with the memory. To keep from giving up completely, he had clung to two things:

Dolores.

And the hope that Ben and Vanya were still out there.

Earlier that morning, he had come across a book in the wreckage of Argyle Public Library. _Extraordinary_ by Vanya Hargreeves. He had sat down right there and started reading. It had been both touching and painful to read about how much Vanya had missed him when he had left.

It had been solely painful to read about how Ben had died.

He had frozen in place, the words swimming on the paper in front of him. Dolores had to call his name a few times in a panic before he remembered to breathe. Shakily, he had gotten to his feet. He wasn’t completely sure that his legs would carry him, but he couldn’t just sit.

“Where are you going?” Dolores had asked.

Somewhere. Anywhere. He had to move, movement was all he knew. That was his power, wasn’t it? He had blinked so much that he didn’t know how to be still. And in the end, his refusal to stay put was what had kept him alive, even after his siblings had died.

“Five?” Dolores had cautiously prodded.

One excerpt from what he had just read stood out in his mind. It said that their father had put up a statue of Ben in the courtyard. Five had to see it. Had to confirm that it was true, even though there was no chance Vanya would lie about that.

“The Academy,” Five had answered.

So there they were, standing by the remains of the Umbrella Academy. There were huge piles of rubble that he wasn’t sure he could maneuver the wagon over. “Will you be alright here for a few minutes?” he asked Dolores, his voice hoarse.

“Will _you_ be alright?” she countered.

No. No, he wouldn’t.

He picked Dolores up and hugged her against his torso, then steered the two of them through the wreckage until he reached the center. “This is where the courtyard was,” he said quietly. “Right in the middle of the Academy.” In his mind, he could see the trees and flowers, see Ben sitting on one of the benches, reading a book in the sunshine.

He gently placed Dolores down on a relatively flat pile of rocks. “Be careful. There’s no point in getting hurt from this,” she said.

“Yeah, yeah.” At this point, he didn’t even care if he got hurt, but he didn’t say that out loud.

Five turned around and scanned the area. As expected, he couldn’t see anything besides the gray rocks that used to make up the walls of the Academy. Letting out a sigh, he knelt down and started digging through the piles.

Dolores tried a few times to start a conversation, but Five didn’t respond. He was focused solely on his goal. He ignored the pebbles digging into his knees, the sun beating down on his neck, the hard edges of granite scraping his hands. Eventually, he become unaware of anything besides the rocks and the rubble, his hands moving almost on their own accord. As time went on, he got more frantic, breathing heavily, scrambling around so fast that his hands started bleeding. He felt like Tantalus, standing beneath the tree branch, desperately reaching for something just out of reach.

And then-

His hands made contact with something smooth and cool, different from the rest of the wreckage. Trembling, he pulled the object out and held it up to his face.

It was a polished, oval-shaped mass of obsidian. The bottom of it was rough and uneven, like it had been broken off of a base. Five ran his fingers over the lines engraved in it. At a certain angle, the even rows looked like hair. Holding his breath, he slowly rotated the stone to see its other side.

A carved face looked back up at him.

Five’s heart stopped. It wasn’t Ben, not exactly. It looked like it had been carved by someone who had never seen Number Six and had to rely on a secondhand description. But it was obviously _supposed_ to depict his brother.

A choked sound escaped Five’s mouth. His hands started shaking so hard that they dropped the decapitated head. He began to hyperventilate.

“Did you find it?” Dolores asked.

His only response was a sob.

There it was. What he had been looking for. The proof that Ben was dead. And he knew that if his other five siblings had died, there was no chance Vanya- gentle, untrained, _normal_ Vanya- would have survived. They were all, without a doubt, long dead.

_I’m the only one left_.

His legs buckled and he sat down hard on the ground. He stared at the subpar facsimile of his brother, the carved obsidian eyes staring blankly back. “They’re all dead, Dolores,” Five said in a whisper.

“I’m so sorry, Five,” she said.

Five sniffled and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He sat there for another minute, unable to find the desire to do anything else. “Dolores,” he started. He knew there was no point in dwelling on ‘what-ifs’, that he needed to focus on the present if he was going to survive. But still, he had to ask the question that had been in the back of his mind for the past few hours. He took a ragged breath. “Do you think…If I had been there, on that mission…do you think maybe Ben would have survived?”

But for once, Dolores didn’t answer.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes I am a writer, yes I am incapable of coming up with titles so I just steal them from another writer's work, we exist.


End file.
